Spoilers: Just a bit in the last episode
Notes: I don't believe I did this... Jupiter Strahan commented about wondering what Relena quoted and wanting to see the notes. I am not about to imagine a weeks worth of notes based on interviews with and observations of Treize! Besides, if Mr Keeler takes notes at all like me, they're incomprehensible to anyone else. :) All that to say... well, here's the article.
BOUNTIFUL PEACE There is a passage in the Bible which tells of a man sowing in tears, and reaping in joy. I can imagine this farmer, standing in his storeroom, looking at the sack of grain with which he must seed his fields. Perhaps he has a wife, perhaps children, and it occurs to him that if he milled that grain, he might feed his family for some time. But after the grain was gone... what then?
So he takes up the sack and heads to the fields. With every handful of precious grain he scatters, he knows that long months of hunger and hard labor await him. He knows much of his effort will be lost to birds and bad soil. And so he weeps for the loss, and the anguish to come. But he also knows, if he will only persevere, the fall will bring a bounty beyond all his hopes, and then he will indeed reap with joy.
This is what it is to dream.
We look upon our stockpile of hopes, and we think that if we are only willing to sacrifice them we will have comfort now. But that comfort would be temporary, and so we take the risk and set out to make our dreams reality. We slave, and sacrifice, giving all we have and more. We cry tears and sweat blood, and our tears water the dream, our blood fertilizes it. So often our efforts are wasted, so much of what we hope for is lost. And still we persevere, and dream of the bounty to come.
Now the harvest is upon us, long in coming and heavy in cost, and we reap peace in abundance. This is a true peace, not the absence of fighting because one power has so overwhelmed all others, but an agreement by all that neither war nor tyranny serves any purpose, and should have no part in our world. The sowers of this peace are many, their names fill our history, and their sacrifices inspire us all. I wish I had time and space to give them each the honor they are due, but here I will list a few: George Washington, Mahatma Gandhi, Winston Churchill, Desmon Tutu, Heero Yuy, and Treize Khushrenada.
Perhaps you are surprised at some of the names I give. Don't be. Each of these men, and thousands like them, faced the choice between security and slavery. A peace might have been gained, if they had only stood aside and allowed the powers which rose against them to have their way. But they knew such a peace, defined by oppression and fear, was no peace at all. And so they struggled, with words, with actions, and sometimes with weapons. They declined easy paths and short-term solutions, sacrificing without qualm for the sake of real peace, the peace of respect and equality rather than of conqueror and conquered.
It is a unique thing to find the desire for that peace among the conquerors; those who hold the upper hand rarely wish to see their opponent strengthened, as it is typically to their own loss. General Khushrenada was one of those rare individuals who realized his opponent need not be so, and that many in unity could be stronger than one in dominion. Do you doubt it? I wouldn't blame you, for I had the same doubts once. The record of his actions are the only voice remaining to him, so let us judge him by his works.
Finding himself at the heart of the corruption of the Alliance, he set out to unmake that force from within.
He met like with like, fighting those who sought battle, conversing with those who sought discussion, and preventing from future mistakes those who would not learn from past ones.
Through ambassadors and open communications, he allowed the Colonies to ask for what they wanted, rather than forcing them to take whatever placating concessions were offered.
Most of all, he never allowed the ends to justify the means, nor the human spirit to be cheapened by more expedient methods, nor a single sacrifice on his behalf to be forgotten.
Some time ago, I had the privilege of speaking with General Khushrenada personally and at great length. He showed me a list of names several pages long, at the time incomplete. Every person who had died for this peace was on that list; every soldier from the battlefield, every clerk from a defeated base, every civilian casualty caught up in the war. It was not an automated listing; he received the names with his reports and added each one himself. I asked the reason for this detailed remembrance.
"The great mistake," he told me, "in the records of past wars is that those who die are known only by numbers. So many died in this battle, this many lost in that war. We find it easy to forget there are people behind those numbers, that a hundred down is a hundred mourned. The humanity is lost, and with it all nobility. I doubt there will be peace in my lifetime. But when it comes, these people will be the reason why. Mankind cannot forget them, or their sacrifice is in vain."
And so we come to now. Peace we've gained at last, though the General, as he predicted, did not live to see it. The tears are behind us, and we reap the peace with joy. And yet the labor is not over. As the farmer knows spring will come again and sets aside a portion of his harvest against it, so we must keep carefully the knowledge of what this joy has cost, and teach it to those who come after. We must tend this dream fulfilled with care and diligence, or we risk losing all, and our children will sow in tears again.
----------- Jonas Keeler is an independent columnist